


Lay to Die Beside Me

by Elanor



Category: War Horse (2011)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-16
Updated: 2012-02-16
Packaged: 2017-10-31 06:46:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/341138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elanor/pseuds/Elanor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim and Jamie have shared a life since they were fourteen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lay to Die Beside Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [moosewingz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/moosewingz/gifts).



They were both named James.

*

"James. James Nicholls."

"...James, James Stewart."

They shook hands warily, two fourteen-year-olds on the cusp of adulthood, not sure of what would come.

*  
James didn't like it that there was someone else at Eton named James.

Not that James was an unusual name--just that before this James, he had been the only James. At home, in the village, if someone called out 'James!', it was him. Now, it's him or him.

*

So no, they didn't really become instant friends.

*

("James, this really is childish, I'm sure he's a perfectly lovely boy," said his mother, smoothing down his hair with a comb. "You're not the only person to be named James, you know. Your great-grandfather, for example--")

*

It took a kitten, two teacups (one broken, one intact), three teaspoons and a stuffed monkey for them to make friends.

*

For a while, they were the Jameses, a joint unit. It didn't take long for them to decide that calling each other by their own name was entirely too odd, so James became Jim while James, for most purposes, stayed James.

*

Only Jim was ever allowed to call him Jamie.

*

(Once someone tried to call James Jamie, and Jim conveniently upset a glass of water on her head. 

She shrieked. Jim looked innocent. Jamie had a terrible time not laughing.)

*

When they graduated from Cambridge, Jamie joined the military, while Jim went into his uncle's firm in London. He gave up after a few years to join Jamie, but Jamie had become subtly different, eyes shadowed by what he had seen, more cynical and short-tempered, bitingly sarcastic.

Jim loved him anyway, loved him deeply and with all his heart. And Jamie took his love and returned it in full force, best as he knew how.

*

The morning was glorious, the field a beautiful amber in the sunrise.

It seemed too easy as they charged across landscape, trampling as they went.

*

Jim lies now in the fields of France, and Jamie has died with him.

*

James is kept safely in a POW camp for a while and then kept safely off the front lines for a couple years. He finally persuades himself into a front line position again, near the end of the war.

*

As he charges across no-man's land, mud splattering in his face as he runs, all he can think about is whether this is where Jim died, where he was shot down, face trampled beyond recognition by his own men's horses. The gunfire around him sounds comically like hail, bullets pinging like ice pellets off windows.

*

A bullet whizzes just that inch too close.

James smiles as he falls.


End file.
